New at DNJournal.com: It's Time For ICANN to Reign In Out-of-Control Registrars

[Duke]

If you play the drop catching game regularly you have probably been stuck at some backwater registrar that makes it impossible for you to manage or transfer your domain. The onslaught of these back alley operations has gotten completely out of hand. In a new editorial at DNJournal.com we are calling on ICANN to get these outlaws under control or pull the plug on them once and for all. You can read our reasoning through the link below:

Time For ICANN to Reign In Out-of-Control Registrars

 

[NameTower]

Nice Article Ron.
Thanks!
- Jordan

 

[mike031]

My favorite scenario is when you try to login to a registrar's web site but cannot figure out what is what because the web site is in some foreign language and does not translate properly either!

...is that great or what?! =0

 

[actnow]

Duke,

Excellent article.

Did you send a notice to Icann, NW, Snapnames and Pool linking to the
article?

 

[Duke]

Duke,

Excellent article.

Did you send a notice to Icann, NW, Snapnames and Pool linking to the
article?

No, I thought I should hire a bodyguard first. :-D

 

[Whois-Search]

Great article duke

Yeah they are only in it to make a quick buck - even their customer service sucks

 

[actnow]

I assume "FeedDirect" will pick up the story.

Especially, since they already spider your publication.

 

[URLCollection]

Nice Job Ron - Super Article!!! Bet that was a chore getting Richard tied up and taking that picture? He will probably want residuals on that one as well... Ha Ha - Lets see if you hear anything from any of the Registars or Icann? That ought to be interesting - Steve

 

[Duke]

Nice Job Ron - Super Article!!! Bet that was a chore getting Richard tied up and taking that picture?

Well, Richard is a great sport for letting me use him as a model so often. However, to tell you the truth he seemed to enjoy getting tied up a little too much. It kind of creeped me out. :-D

 

[Duke]

I assume "FeedDirect" will pick up the story.

Especially, since they already spider your publication.

I would think they would probably pass since it is an editorial rather than a news story. They pick up our weekly sales report every week but usually skip the cover stories which are features. They had me set up a special page for them with links to each new item we put up to make it easier and faster for them to link to new articles. They then must make editorial decisions on what to pick up (other than the sales report which is an automatic).

I started tracking how many visitors come in from FeedDirect (formerly Moreover) as opposed to our front door in the 24 hours after our weekly sales reports are released. Turns out they add between 10-15% to the total we normally get, so it is not a huge increase. However, they are on a wide variety of sites so I think the real value is that they expose us to new readers that didn't know about us before and once they find us they become regulars. I get emails from a lot of those folks when they first discover us.

 

[David G]

Well, Richard is a great sport for letting me use him as a model so often. However, to tell you the truth he seemed to enjoy getting tied up a little too much. It kind of creeped me out. :-D

My oddest one is www.signdomains.com out of New Delhi India. If you go to upper left side and click-on Renew Your Domain and next enter the domain ALREADY reg'd there, instead of a renewal form coming up a transfer-in form comes up for transfering the name to them?

Tried many times and it happens over and over again on each of the domains Pool.com grabbed thru them, even though all are in fact already reg'd there, as verified by Whois. All support requests on this issue are ignored. Does not appear to be any way to renew the names. Very worried as some are expiring soon.

The mystery is how are these 3rd-rate registrars so successful at grabbing the names but so terrible at managing them and simply making sure their website works? How do firms like that manage to stay in business?

 

[Duke]

The mystery is how are these 3rd-rate registrars so successful at grabbing the names but so terrible at managing them and simply making sure their website works? How do firms like that manage to stay in business?

The technical guys would know better, but I would guess Pool provides the drop catching scripts and all the registrars do is provide their registry connections. The more connections the better chance of getting the names.

 

[David G]

The technical guys would know better, but I would guess Pool provides the drop catching scripts and all the registrars do is provide their registry connections. The more connections the better chance of getting the names.

Thanks, had no idea Pool supplied scripts but it makes sense they would. If these firms can't even manage their own website how in the world could they possibly write and implement a successful script?

 

[URLCollection]

This is something else - When you send ICANN an email regarding a problem registrar, you get a spam block email response such as this - They make it very diffcult to communicate with them - Steve

Hello, and thank you for your message.

You have sent a message to an email address at ICANN. Unfortunately, we
collect a tremendous amount of spam, and we have been forced to
implement protective measures. In order to process your message we need
to confirm that it came from a real email address. To confirm your
message, you can either:

1) Reply to this message, without altering the subject line
The "Re: " added by many mail clients is OK, but please note
that this method is *not* foolproof.

or

2) Visit the URL
<http://confirm.icann.org/?s=$sum&l=$addr>
If you want to be very sure that your message gets through, do both steps
above -- it does no harm to confirm more than once.

 

[Duke]

I assume "FeedDirect" will pick up the story.

Especially, since they already spider your publication.

Well Richard I was wrong. FeedDirect has already picked up the editorial so it is all over the internet now (in fact it is the top news item on the feed DNForum has on their front page). A lot of people will read this, so let's hope it generates some positive action. It may not be the kind of story ICANN wanted to see with their big meeting in Malaysia kicking off tomorrow.

 

[cambler]

May I pick a nit?

Nobody uses "scripts" anymore to catch dropped names. At least, nobody who wants to catch more than the occasional name.

Dropcatching software these days is very optimized and very tightly-coded.

You'd be amazed. Indeed, you will be - one day, when the drop is no more (and I don't mean WLS - but let's be honest, it won' go on forever), I will be publishing a book on what it looks like from the "inside."

 

[Duke]

May I pick a nit?

Nobody uses "scripts" anymore to catch dropped names. At least, nobody who wants to catch more than the occasional name.

Dropcatching software these days is very optimized and very tightly-coded.

You'd be amazed. Indeed, you will be - one day, when the drop is no more (and I don't mean WLS - but let's be honest, it won' go on forever), I will be publishing a book on what it looks like from the "inside."

Looking forward to the book Chris. As a non-programmer scripts and software are the same thing in my mind. Looking forward to learning more about the differences and how this process, that is still a mysterious one to most of us, really works.

 

[Duke]

I assume "FeedDirect" will pick up the story.

Especially, since they already spider your publication.

To update what I said about FeedDirect above I learned something new this morning. I mentioned that they added another 10-15% to our traffic for our weekly sales reports, however on this editorial, they have boosted traffic by 50%. In thinking about it, I'm sure that over the 10 months the sales reports have been running, hundreds of people have bookmarked those and come back every Tuesday evening. The editorials have no set publication time so few people coming through the front door check on those regularly. So, when it comes to generating traffic for something new on a website, FeedDirect clearly has a very substantial impact.

 

[mole]

Dang I have a name in Alohanic caught by Pool.

 

[Duke]

Dang I have a name in Alohanic caught by Pool.

My condolences. :dead: